Posts tagged ‘what i’ve learned’

If I were a better player and had a quicker reaction time than I do, I’d likely enjoy PvP. Running around pwning the opposite faction is probably a lot of fun and the Bloodthirsty title would be an awesome one to have. I think it would be less fun to run around and gank your own faction, but that’s just my opinion and it’s certainly not based on experience. However, I can say for certain that not willfully participating in PvP and choosing to live life peacefully on a PvE server yet dying because you accidentally flagged yourself is not fun. Neither is it fun to die because a member of the opposite faction purposely stepped into your AoE to force you to be flagged. When these types of incidents happen I stubbornly just stand there until they kill me. I refuse to put up a fight because I want them to know they just killed someone who was not interested in their little games. I don’t want them to brag about how they owned me; I want them to know they killed someone who wasn’t even defending themselves. Do they actually see it that way or feel bad because of it? No. I’m quite certain they are laughing hysterically and hoping I’ll run back and rez before the 5 minute timer wears off so they can kill me again. Sometimes, because I foolishly believe every person has kindness buried somewhere within, I do rez and they do kill me again.

Sigh.

This subject is on my mind a lot these days thanks to Bloody Coins. I am still limited in my playtime currently, but in my few excursions to the Timeless Isle I have been killed while AoE’ing a rare and getting flagged. But hold on, I’m not actually going to complain about that (well, I complain out loud with obscenities at the time it happens but it fades). It’s inconvenient and I don’t love it, but I don’t begrudge anyone who’s interested in gathering the coins for doing what they have to do.

But hold on again, I am going to complain about 1 specific incident that happened to me a few days ago. See, the Neverending Spritewood is the purple crystal that spawns near the tree that has all the Nice Sprites dancing around it and clicking on the crystal triggers them to turn into Angry Sprites. Killing Angry Sprites triggers some Scary Sprites and killing those gives you a chance to receive the rare Dandelion Frolicker pet. Did you know the Neverending Spritewood is only clickable once per day by each character? It is. If you get lucky enough to spot it and click it you can’t click it again until the next day, even if you see it again.

So I am going to complain about the fact that the other day, during a rare 1 hour chance I had to login to the game, I was robbed of my chance to try and get the pet to drop by a Night Elf druid from my own server MY OWN FACTION. I happened to spot the crystal and saw no one near it. I ran over, clicked it and prepared myself to pull a group of the angry sprites. I approached them, targeted one and started my biggest AoE. A split second later, I saw a someone run up in cat form and the next thing I know I am dead. I had only gotten 2 of the sprites killed. Now someone flagging themselves and then wandering into the midst of my AoE while I’m helping bring down Houlon is annoying, but when I rez I still get to loot Houlon. Same with the rest of the rares on the Isle. But in this particular instance it’s not just you getting your Timeless Coin and me still getting credit for what I was doing. It was cruel, in my opinion. Days later I am still upset about it, which is silly and certainly won’t change anything, but it’s true. Maybe this person didn’t realize I wouldn’t be able to simply start the event over. Maybe she did and just didn’t give a fuck. I’ll never know. I passively, aggressively whispered her to tell her how disappointed I was but I got no reply, which is probably for the best. No need for me to turn into an asshole just because I perceived someone was being an asshole to me. I did immediately tweet her name out and I apologize for that. Twitter is so instant it makes it easy to try and name shame there. I’ve done it more than once, but I don’t like myself for doing it.

What is the purpose of all this rambling? I just wanted to get it off my chest so maybe I can stop being so pissed off about it. In a couple of weeks I will be able to start playing more again and there will be more chances to trigger the event and try to get the pet drop. It’s no big deal, right?

(Let’s pretend I actually finished this and posted it during the morning, instead of falling asleep at the keyboard and deciding to go to bed and finish it this evening.)

Once again I have proven my brain doesn’t function when it comes to all things Azeroth. My ineptitude is getting so ridiculous, I have decided to embrace it as blog fodder and allow you all to laugh at my silliness in hopes that the joy it brings you will help keep me from facepalming myself into a headache.

So this weekend I began my return to WoW from recent limited game time and as I refocused on things, I really began to lament the poor quality of my weapon. I have a blue staff, ilvl 450. How sad is that? It’s pretty sad. As I looked up gearing lists I realized there’s not a lot of options to upgrade my weapon outside of LFR. There’s a chance of a drop in Heroic Scholomance and a chance of a drop from Galeon, but nothing I can go out and buy or obtain easily. It made me a little grumpy because even though I had ignored my weapon for a long time now, I had promised myself I would queue for ToT LFR this weekend and suddenly upgrading my weapon became a priority.

I mentioned it in guild chat and one of my guildies said “hey, don’t you have the Frostscythe from Lord Ahune?” And I was all like “oh it’s a transmog from last year, had it in my bank.” Then I carried on my merry way of whatever derping around I was currently doing and dismissed the entire conversation. Four hours later my eyes opened wide and this conversation came back to my mind and slapped me upside the head to let me know what a fool I was.

You may recall back in June I wrote a blog post just to be silly and brag about all the Frostscythe’s that were dropping for me since I was doing the holiday boss across 3 toons. My DK got it a couple of times but doesn’t use staffs and my Troll Druid got it and I specifically remember looking at the weapon’s stats and recognizing it as an upgrade so I equipped it on her. Elfi had already transmogged her old one and now I (thankfully) don’t remember specifically if a new one actually dropped for her this year… and I’m glad I don’t remember. Because somehow I went through the holiday never realizing it would be an upgrade for Elfi. As soon as I got the pet to drop on one of my toons, I didn’t even do the fight anymore on any toon. OMG I AM SUCH A MORON.

I just knew Elfi already had it and now my horde toon did too. I never connected the fact that it was an upgrade for my horde druid to the fact that my alliance druid needed an upgrade. HOW DO I FUNCTION AS A HUMAN BEING? Seriously, you guys gotta believe me that I’m not this stupid all the time. I do manage to hold a job and get myself dressed every morning. The moment this all finally blossomed in my head last night, hours after my guildie had mentioned it, I was flabbergasted that I let this happen.

It’s time to finally just admit I have a terrible attention span when it comes to WoW. I come into it like every day is a new day, which is fine for most video games. They are meant to be a mindless distraction. But WoW is more to me than a video game. It’s a community and one that I’ve been a part of for years now. I want to be better at it but my brain seems to just login and go “yay, distraction for the human so I can sleep” and I skip off into the sunset looking for sparkling flowers. So I have finally realized, I need a WoW notebook. And a stack of post-it notes. If I can’t force my brain to remember that the last time I played my shaman she needed to go to SW and train up mining before questing again, then I’ll start writing that shit down. Here’s hoping it works.

I never played Pokemon. Not because I was never interested, exactly, but because I turned 26 the year Pokemon came into existence. I did however have nephews who played all the Game Boy games and watched the cartoons and collected the cards, so I had a basic understanding of it. Now that I’ve dabbled in Pet Battles in WoW, I really wish I had played Pokemon back in the day because I’m beginning to really enjoy this type of little mini-game. Maybe I should pick up a game or two for my Nintendo DS. Yes, maybe I will.

Anyway, point is, it’s been a learning process more so for me than most of you young whippersnappers who grew up with the game. There’s a lot of strategy involved that I’m just now beginning to figure out. I have had many noob moments. Like back in December when I randomly chose to battle and my opponent was a rare I didn’t have. I immediately whipped out my Terrible Turnip because I knew from reading about it on Twitter that the turnip would only take the pet down to 1 health and then you can capture it. What I didn’t realize (because I never had really bothered to pay attention to attack types) is that only weakening blow will leave the pet at 1 health. I went in mashing buttons and killed that rare pretty quickly. Ugh.

Other moronic things I have done as I have slowly started gathering pets is start a battle with 1 or 2 of mine dead and the other at less than half health. That rarely works out, I gotta tell you. I’ve gotten excited about finding something with a slow spawn rate and immediately starting a battle before realizing my pets are level 8 and I’m battling a level 16. That NEVER works out. I’ve camped a slow spawning pet that was 2 levels higher than me and was thrilled the first one I saw was a rare quality and I managed to capture it … only to die on the second pet and not get to keep my captured pet. Which I didn’t realize until I frantically looked through my pet journal and couldn’t find it. Yep, I’ve done a lot of things wrong.

But I’m learning. I’m asking questions on Twitter and reading pet battle blog posts. I’m finally paying attention to what my pets attacks actually do. I’m starting to get the hang of it and the better I get at it, the more addicted I’m becoming. With all of this in mind, I do realize that choosing pets for my team based on how cute they are may not be the best idea. So I’m posting my team here for you guys to make suggestions on what I may want to do differently. Please feel free to look me up on the WoW armory as Elfindale, night elf druid on Moonrunner, and check out what pets I own and let me know your opinion on if i should change up my team or if it’s okay the way it is for now. I welcome all the advice I can get because I’m preparing to really start working on battling and leveling my team up.

My entire WoW career, I’ve been behind. I started playing during Burning Crusades and since I was a complete noob and leveled as a resto druid (I didn’t know any better), I only reached level 70 about a week or two before Wrath dropped. I was lucky enough to get completely carried through Karazhan by the guild I was in at the time because they had the place on farm status. So I did get to see Kara when it was mostly current and I did get the Vampiric Batling pet that dropped from Prince Tenris during the Scourge event. But I don’t consider that as meaning I raided Kara. Far from it. I also didn’t run many dungeons as there was no LFD tool and I was too shy and polite to bother my raiding guildies by asking for help and/or dungeon runs. Since I’m not a big alt’er, I am still very unfamiliar with most low-level dungeons. I don’t have any of them memorized, layout wise or boss wise. I would estimate I haven’t been through any one of them more than 10 times total, not counting The Stockades which I run above level as a way of farming wool when necessary. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if there are still some out there I have never even ran yet.

I don’t remember exactly when I finally reached level 80 in Wrath, but I can assure you it was not super fast. The guild pretty much had Naxx on farm mode before I started dipping my toes into the place and even though I did get to run it enough with them that I mostly had it memorized, I certainly didn’t feel as though I was helping with progression at all. I was just someone who was available to go sometimes. I only saw the first 3 bosses of Ulduar (until during Cata when myself and 6 others revisited and completed the place) and the first 3 of Icecrown Citadel (never have finished this place) and I know for a fact there are some dungeons I’ve never completed in Northrend.

When Cata launched I was determined to be better at keeping up. It didn’t happen. Between Cata heroics starting out so damn difficult that I lost my will to heal and the fallout of a major guild breakup and my unhappiness with the situation, I didn’t do jack shit in Cata. I eventually switched guilds after debating it for months but the new guild was in the process of becoming divided so I sorta let myself just fade into the background there. I definitely haven’t been in every dungeon from this expansion and I only got to see the first 2 Firelands bosses once.

Cut to playing Star Wars: The Old Republic since pre-launch in a full-time raiding guild. My first ever experience as a weekly, serious raider. Guess what? I love raiding. I’m still raiding in SWTOR with the same guild I started the game with, though I suck at committing to weekend raiding consistently through summer.

During my time in SWTOR, I never left WoW completely. I chose to delete all my real ID friends (all 4 of them) and roll a horde toon on a random server just as an escape because even though I don’t have any personal issues with anyone I’ve been involved with in-game, I also wasn’t in a great place. Does that make sense? I didn’t play much at all for a good 6 month period, but I couldn’t give it up completely. Over the past few months my addiction to WoW finally started to increase once again and just a few weeks before Mists was released I started playing my old Alliance toons and joining new guilds and getting excited about the game like I used to be. This time, this expansion, I am going to get it right. I’m going to do all the content, see all the sights, and thanks to Battletag grouping and LFR, I hope to even see the raids while they’re current.

I power-leveled Elfindale to 90 in 5 days. That was huge for me. Then I took a few days off because my ass and legs were very pissed at me for forcing them to stay in an office chair for so long. Once I logged back in to begin my dailies and start concentrating on endgame, I got lost in a sea of Farmville, Pokemon, and unlimited dailies in numerous zones. I am completely overwhelmed. I know that the Golden Lotus dailies are important for gearing up for raiding but I’m not actually a part of a raiding team, so do I need to rush into that? The Cloud Serpent dailies will get me a cool mount. Fishing dailies would be something I would enjoy and fishing can make me money. Leveling up cooking and growing food seems like fun and a good money maker and important to raiding so maybe I should start there? I am so unsure of where to begin. There are just too many things. I am actually way more interested in pet battles than I ever thought I’d be, so I want to spend some time in that area too.

So here I am, starting an expansion with dreams of being a “real” WoW player for once and already I’m just flitting around aimlessly and not making good use of my time. I have got to figure out how to change that part of me. Transferring servers, playing SWTOR as my main game for a long time, surrounding myself with some different people in WoW and the fact that the expansion seems to be a really great one have all combined to make me a very happy player. But if I can’t find a direction for myself I’m really afraid I’ll end up back in the same routine and I really don’t want to do that. I want to enjoy Mists and all that it has to offer. I want this to be my time to shine.

Are any of you feeling overwhelmed with all there is to do? How are you deciding what to prioritize?

While working on my archaeology today, I decided to skip the gryphon taxi and go cross country from Stormwind to Burning Steppes. While doing so, I crossed a section of north Elwynn Forest that I had never noticed before and spotted a cabin sitting high up on a hill near the top of a waterfall. I swooped down to have a closer look and see if anyone lived there. As I approached, I noticed the tiny yard was filled with about 20 sheep and I immediately decided to stop, kill them all and then see how fast they would respawn. My guild is still chasing the Critter Kill Squad achievement so I wanted to know if this would be a good place to help that along. And I did discover their respawn rate… but I also discovered two other things.

1. For some reason there is some sort of hybrid sheep there with a mechanical head and a strange symbol on it’s wool. Anyone have any back story on this?

2. The other thing I discovered is somebody does live in this cabin and they were both angry and offended… yet quietly went back inside and allowed the killing spree to continue.’

And for anyone who may be wondering, the respawn rate is the same as most other critters. No real advantage to fly up here and do this. Unless you want to see a pissed off farmer, of course.

Regardless of how badly we want to, most of us do not get to spend the majority of our lives logged into WoW. Between the normal stuff like family and work, there are also other things such as social obligations, unforeseen emergencies and that stupid thing they call sleep which force us to hop out of Azeroth and back into the real world from time to time. But don’t despair, fellow nerds. It is possible to utilize this time away from the game in such a manner as to improve your quality of play when next you get to log in.

My strategies; let me show you them

1. Read Blogs– The number one, most valuable way to stay on top of your game is to be informed. No matter what faction, race, class or style of play… you should be able to easily find several blogs that have information specific to you and several that are chock full of general news and information about the game. Read them daily, or at least several times a week. The easiest way to do that would be to subscribe to them through Google Reader (or any similar service). The reason is because feed readers almost always make it through the filter at work or school so you can read them on your breaks or between classes. Feed readers also automatically grab the newest posts and keep all your blogs in one place on one page, saving you time by not having to look up bookmarks and flip back and forth between pages. Google Reader is the one I prefer for several reasons: It stays logged in for me because I’m already logged into Gmail and Gtalk AND because it’s a free app on my Android based smart phone, so I can read all my blogs on the go. Finding well-written, regularly updated blogs on WoW topics of interest to you will keep you abreast of any changes that have been made, the newest techniques that have been discovered, etc.

2. Listen to Podcasts – I have to admit, I only recently discovered the value of podcasts. I hadn’t been snubbing them on purpose, I just hadn’t taken the time to notice all of the amazing options they had to offer. Podcasts are one of the most flexible mediums available to us these days. I became instantly addicted to them just a few weeks ago when on a whim, I downloaded a few episodes of Matticast to my iPod and took it to the gym with me. I had always listened to music while working out in the past and at times I would find myself having to adjust the volume level when different songs came on that had been downloaded at different levels, skip past songs I wasn’t in the mood for or just generally tuning the music out until it was just a gentle roar in the background while I miserably counted every step on the treadmill waiting for my torture to be over. But the day I listened to Matticast at the gym was an amazing experience. Because it was people talking, I had to focus in on it more to actually comprehend what was being said. Focusing on the podcast instead of my workout meant that I walked a solid 23 minutes on the treadmill before I ever once glanced down to look at my time or distance. As a fat ass, that is absolutely amazing for me. But that wasn’t the only advantage. Podcasts are almost always recorded with at least 2 or 3 people giving input. That means they are bouncing ideas off of each other, giving thoughts and opinions on the suggestions the other make. It’s a real conversation with opposing or agreeing points of view. That really intensifies the informational value. I now subscribe to a handful of podcasts and I was recently listening to a podcast about how to make gold in-game. The first speaker talked about constantly scanning the AH for a few particular items and learning how to run the market on those items. But his podcast partner had a few counter opinions on why he didn’t think that was the best method. I was totally absorbed. Because of their exchange, I developed my own theories on what may work best for me and in the past week I’ve made about 15k gold with minimal effort.

Podcasts are easy to find, just do a google search for WoW podcasts (you can even specify it to druid podcasts or money-making podcasts, etc.) and start listening. It’s a very flexible way of getting information. You can find dozens and dozens of WoW ones in the iTunes store and subscribe to most of them for free. Then you can set them up to automatically download each new episode as it’s recorded. Once you have a few new ones available, throw them on your iPod or even burn them on cd to listen to in the car… if your car is retarded like mine and still doesn’t have an iPod jack even though it’s only 4 years old. A third option for podcasts is just to simply listen to them through their home webpage. Most of them include an in-page player that is useable through the web filter (at least where I work). Just try to remember you’re not actually listening to a live chat because when you start laughing out loud and talking back to no one, people give you weird looks.

3. Stay in touch with your guildies and other WoW friends – Do you have any idea how huge WoW is on Twitter? HUGE! Once again I am going to have to admit I’m fairly new to the Twitter world; I’ve only been using it for WoW purposes for the past 3 or 4 months. I’ve had an account for over a year, I had just never figured out why I had an account. It wasn’t until I started following my GM (at the time) @KissMyAlas that I realized how cool Twitter could actually be. I immediately downloaded the TweetDeck app on my smart phone and followed people I could see in Alas’ feed. Even though I don’t seem to ever say anything important on my tweets, reading everyone else’s is a constant source of enlightenment and entertainment.

But I’m not just talking about Twitter here. Stay in touch with the people who share your interests. Start a Facebook group page for your guild where you guys can be silly and get to know each other better. Use an instant messaging service to bother your friends stay in touch with friends you’ve made in-game. I prefer GTalk and my handle is roseykrh at gmail dot com. Hit me up. I suck at talking face to face (I’m quite shy) but online I’m awesome. At least in my opinion. Creating bonds like this with people who have the same hobby as you will also strengthen your ties to the game.

4. Jot down notes or to-do lists – This one’s easy. Most of us use this method to make all sorts of things easier in our lives. The less time you spend standing around trying to remember what you needed to do, the more time you spend actually being productive. We write out grocery lists, chore schedules, whose turn it is to pick up the kids at school, etc. It makes perfect sense we should use this same method of efficiency in our WoW lives. If you got new gear in a heroic last night and then immediately logged out, jot down a list of what enchants or gems you need to look for to enhance that new item. If you’re into playing the AH for money, use your free minutes at work to keep track of what exactly you want to buy when you get home. If you have several alts and need to fit in dailies on all of them along with a heroic on your main, write down which dailies are the most important for each character and do them in order of proximity to maximize your time and get the most out of your efforts. It sucks to fly out of Stormwind on your way to Eastern Plaguelands only to realize you forgot to stop by the bank for an important item. It’s a waste of your valuable time to go back and forth multiple times. Write it down and get it all done right the first time.

5. Exercise and nutrition – As I mentioned earlier in this post, I am a fat ass. I am not trying to preach to anyone about exercise and nutrition. I just want to point out a few quick things. For one, the better your diet is the more alert and focused you are. This is a proven fact and it applies to all areas of your life, not just gaming – but it can be extremely important if you are signed up for a raid that may easily last 3 or 4 hours. There are all sorts of discussions on the interwebz about the best raid foods. They need to be quick and easy to pick up and pop in your mouth while at the same time not leaving crumbs or a juice on your fingers or your keyboard. I just want to encourage you all to remember that apples and cheese is an excellent option. Or baby carrots, celery sticks, raw cauliflower, etc. These things are tasty and can make you a better raider. True story.

Now, for the exercise part, let me embarrass myself and tell you the story about why exercise now directly affects my WoW playing. About 10 days ago, I was diagnosed with Patellar Tracking Disorder in both knees. That’s just a technical name for dislocated kneecaps. They are not grossly dislocated and I have not suffered any injuries that have caused this. Both of my kneecaps are being pulled out of the center of my joints and off to the outside of my knees. This is because everyone has two tendons that hold their kneecap in place. One goes from the kneecap to the outside of the knee, the other goes from the kneecap to the inside of the knee. In my case, the outside tendon is way stronger than the inside tendon and as a result is winning an unwanted “tug-o-war” battle resulting in it pulling my kneecap over towards the outside while stretching my weak inner tendon towards it. This causes several things to happen. One being that my inner tendon is being stretched farther than it was meant to go and it hurts. Not only does it hurt when it’s physically bumped or touched, but it hurts anytime my knee is flexed. Try walking, sitting or getting up out of a chair without flexing your knee. The other thing that happens is because my kneecap isn’t sitting in the center of the joint, where a nice little grooved-out channel exists to help it move along the joint smoothly, when my knee is flexed the kneecap is gliding along my bone instead. Sounds awesome, huh? Well it’s not as horrible as it sounds, I guess. I mean I do experience pain and stiffness and tenderness, but it’s not excruciating and can be managed with Aleve, ice packs and keeping my legs straight as much as possible.

The interesting part is what causes this type of disorder. It’s generally seen in two types of people (and no, it’s not fat people Mom!). Athletes sometimes get this condition because their movements may cause the outside of their leg to get over-used, resulting in the outside tendon being too strong. Or, it can happen to people who lead a sedentary lifestyle. I’ll let you figure out for yourself which of these two categories I fall into. I’ve had a desk job for the past 5 years, but since October I have been working 3rd shift so my schedule doesn’t line up with my friends and family as easily anymore and my social life (going shopping with my sister, babysitting my nephew, etc.) has become non-existent; which means I don’t leave my chair at home much. The desk job I currently have is NOT the same job I’ve had for the past 4 years and this new company doesn’t have an exercise room like my last job did. In fact, it’s such a small area there’s nowhere for me to go on my breaks and my 3rd shift schedule is a straight 8 hour shift, so I don’t even get to leave for lunch. I get two 15 minute breaks which I use to eat and try to walk around the cubes a time or two. Top it all off with the fact that my addiction to the game has increased ten-fold since right before the Cata launch and I spend an average of 30 hours a week playing WoW where I used to only spend about 8 and you’ll see how all the conditions have led me to this physical issue(and I haven’t even mentioned that this is the worst winter on record for my part of the world, making me even more housebound than normal). I started an exercise routine at the first of the year because I am ready to lose weight. But now it’s become more about strengthening my leg muscles to reverse the damage and balancing my time being sedentary while playing the game. That is why the exercise and nutrition are mentioned here. You will benefit yourself greatly by simply adding 4 hours of physical activity to your week. It will allow you to enjoy the game longer and not view it as something that has dislocated both of your kneecaps.

So there you have it, 5 little things you can do when you’re not able to login to the game which will improve and enhance your WoW experience. I’m sure most of you die-hards are already doing one or two of these things, but if I’ve given you any new ideas then my purpose has been served. Now I command you to go forth and conquer.

It was bound to happen; since my interest and excitement and time invested in the game has increased so much… I’m starting to get greedy. I have a yearning to make gold. But I decided to study it a bit and do some proper research as to what is the most efficient way of making gold. Don’t tell the people who sign my paycheck, but I’ve spent the last several nights at work reading blogs and forums and listening to podcasts to compare everyone’s opinions on the subject. I haven’t quite made up my mind yet which method I am going to employ. I will probably try several different things out before settling on something permanent. And even when I do settle on something I probably won’t be sharing it here because it’s just such an individualized endeavor and most likely rather boring to read about.

Speaking of rather boring to read about, let’s get to the point of this post. You see, while I was busy burying myself elbow deep in information about making gold I accidentally learned some things about the Remote Auction House. I knew it existed and I knew it was available for use on my Droid, but I had also heard there was a monthly subscription cost so I never bothered to ever look it up. Now that I’ve learned more about it, I’m even more confused than I was when I knew nothing about it. And that’s because it’s like a paradox of stupidity and usefulness all rolled up into one.

Let me see if I can explain what I mean. The mobile app for my phone is free so it won’t hurt me to download it. That is intriguing. But unless I purchase the monthly subscription, all I can do is look at stuff in the AH. Personally, I don’t understand why anyone would be content merely viewing the AH. I suppose some people may track trends and need to know what the hottest selling item is from day to day. But if you saw something trending up very quickly and you knew you had some in your bags you could sell, you wouldn’t be able to sell them using the Remote Auction House app without the monthly subscription. That is unimpressive, to say the least. On the other hand, if playing the Auction House is the gold-making method I choose then a mere $2.99 a month subscription fee is not as terrible as it could be. Except for two reasons – I already pay a monthly subscription fee to Blizzard AND there are limitations to what you can do on the Remote Auction House even after you pay them to let you use it.

Limitations such as these:
– The billing cycle for the RAH is not the same as the billing cycle for the monthly game subscription. You would need to remember to subtract these payments at two different times during each month.
– A WoW prepaid game card cannot be used to pay for the RAH service. WTF? Isn’t money money?
– You cannot make more than 200 transitions daily. That number includes creating auctions, bidding on items and buying out auctions. Not 200 for each of these things, 200 total. Sure that’s a generous number. I can’t imagine I would ever need more than that in a day. Yet I can’t help but think that if we’re paying $3 a month for this, it ought to be unlimited.
Now keep in mind, I do understand the necessity of Blizzard regulating the economy and making sure services such as these do not get abused. I do think the transactions should be limited. I just don’t think you should pay for it to be limited. Why not let it be a free service and drop the limit to 50 transactions a day? Wouldn’t that also help keep the economy regulated while at the same time allowing more players the ability to take advantage of this service? I dare say it may even improve the economy. And as far as the billing cycle and the prepaid cards… can’t we all just get along, Blizz? Why do simple things like this have to be so difficult? Stop thinking outside the box and just put everything in the damn box so we can carry it easier.

Congratulations! You have made it to the end of the post. I would like to apologize for going off on a bit of a tangent there. Just for the record, if I do decide to play the AH then I most certainly will pay for a 1 month subscription to the Remote Auction House to see if it helps me at all. Just because I think it could be improved on doesn’t mean I’m calling for a boycott of the service. If I want to use it, I’ll use it. And you should too. I would also like to apologize for the fact that I am just now posting about something which was introduced like 7 months ago. But now we’re all a little more informed, and probably a lot more sleepy. Yes, I do happen to be aware that “a lot more sleepy” isn’t proper and I should have just said “a lot sleepier”, but it made the sentence flow better. It also made Microsoft Word very angry, but that’s beside the point. Now remind me, why am I still talking?